Gallery: A Pointillist Barn Owl

From the Winter 2022 issue of Living Bird magazine. Subscribe now.

Geoff Keller is one of the most prolific audio recordists in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Macaulay Library. Over 24 years, Keller archived about 5,000 audio recordings from hundreds of bird species from the Arctic Circle to central Mexico. But about 15 years ago, Keller lost his ability to hear high-frequency sounds. So he stopped recording birds in audio and, in a midlife reinvention, turned to recording birds in art.

Keller’s intricate ink drawings of birds are composed of tens of thousands of tiny dots. For his medium, Keller uses aspen wooden vases and sculptures, which he also makes as a woodworker. Keller’s artwork is displayed in the Hoosier Artist Gallery in southern Indiana.